Defending Shariah in America

America, apologizing to brutal murderers for disposing of terrorist messages in a quran, is Shariah law in America.America, Judge Martin dismissing the charges against a Muslim who attacked a Halloween parade goer because his costume was an insult to Muhammad, is the Shariah.

The Washington Post on March 2 ran a piece written by Omar Sacirbey for the Religion News Service. Muslims launch campaign to 'understand' Shariah. It began: "Against a backdrop of heartland fears that U.S. Muslims seek to impose Islamic law on American courts, a leading Muslim group will launch a campaign on Monday (March 5) to dispel what it called misconceptions about Shariah."

"Heartland fears" are actually heartland realities: a new study has found that Shariah has already been used as a determining factor in court cases in 23 states.

"Many Americans associate Shariah," says the Post, "with the harsh punishments carried out in a few Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, even as U.S. Muslim groups insist they have no desire to introduce Islamic law on themselves or others." It quotes Zahid Bukhari, president of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Circle of North America, complaining: "There were all these wrong notions about Shariah."

Here's the thing: "U.S. Muslim groups insist they have no desire to introduce Islamic law on themselves or others," so why should they be blocking efforts to outlaw it? It doesn't make sense. And it's not that "Americans associate Shariah with the harsh punishments carried out in a few Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia" -- it's that those things are part of every form of Shariah ever known since the beginning of Islam. So are Americans right to associate Shariah with stonings, amputations, clitorectomies, honor killings, death for apostates, the denial of free speech, and the treatment of women like slaves? When has there ever been a Shariah state that didn't feature those things?

Bukhari goes on, as quoted in the Post: "The most worrisome thing, he said, was that the level of hatred toward Shariah had spread from the margins of society to the mainstream. The ICNA campaign has already drawn fire from 'anti-Shariah' groups in the United States."

"The level of hatred toward Shariah." It's "hatred" now to know what Shariah is and has always been in every place it has ever been implemented.

The article says that ICNA is sponsoring the "roughly $3 million dollar campaign" that "will feature billboards in at least 15 U.S. cities, 'Shariah seminars' on 20 college campuses, and town hall-style forums and interfaith events in 25 cities."

This sinister, deceptive taqiyya campaign has 3 million dollars, and we're having trouble scraping together two nickels for our campaign countering it with the truth. If we had 3 million dollars, everyone in America would know the truth about Shariah.

One of the billboards that ICNA has set up above the Holland Tunnel in New York City says, "Shariah is not scary." Shariah is not scary, unless you're an apostate from Islam, or a girl who doesn't want to wear hijab, or a wife who angers her husband, or a Christian who says he doesn't think Muhammad is a prophet, or a Jew who is breathing...

Then the WaPo mentions the resistance: "Even before the campaign was launched, there was already pushback from two groups, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of Nations, both categorized as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center."

Note how the WaPo mentions the SPLC's politicized and manipulative designation, while never mentioning that SPLC characterizes essentially any and every effective group that is not far-Left or Islamic supremacist as a "hate group." Nor does it mention that ICNA is a Muslim Brotherhood group, so designated in a captured internal MB document that says that the Brotherhood in the US is dedicated to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house."

The article does have the decency to quote me calling the ICNA campaign "a complete whitewash." Er yup. Then it says: "The two groups have designed a billboard parodying ICNA's Kansas City billboard. 'Shariah: Got Fatwa? Get help!' it says, along with a toll-free number and website, neither of which worked."

The WaPo is lying. They both work.

The deceptions start coming thick and fast in the WaPo article after that: "Geller wrote on her blog that the Quran endorses wife beating and mandates that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's. Shariah, she said, mandates the death penalty for apostasy and the subjugation of non-Muslims."

Wife-beating: "Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them" (Quran 4:34). Testimony: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (Qur'an 2:282). Death penalty for apostasy: Muhammad said: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari 9.84.57). Subjugation of non-Muslims: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." (Quran 9:29)

But the WaPo tells us not to believe the Quran's plain words: "Muslim scholars counter that Geller and like-minded critics cherry-pick from Islamic scripture or quote it out of context to paint a false picture of Shariah."

Does anyone still fall for this "out of context" line? Can anyone explain a context in which it is OK to say that a man can beat a woman? What context justifies saying apostates from Islam should be killed? What context makes it just fine that non-Muslims should be warred against and subjugated? They don't address any of that, only the question of a woman's testimony. They quote "Sheikh Abdool Rahman Khan, an ICNA Shariah expert and resident scholar at the Islamic Learning Foundation outside Chicago," acknowledging that "early Islamic law said a woman's testimony was worth half a man's, but only in some areas, such as finance and medicine, where there were few women bankers or doctors. 'It wasn't about equality, it was about participation of women in certain professions,' Rahman said."

And yet Shariah states like Saudi Arabia and Iran still devalue a woman's testimony. But they don't mention that. Instead, they haul out the familiar claim that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures contain "problematic texts" also, as if the world were plagued with Scripture-quoting Jewish and Christian terrorists. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im of the Emory University School of Law in Atlanta says: "But Christians aren't judged based on what the Bible said 2,000 years ago, but on how they behave today. Why are Muslims judged according to these literalist interpretations, and not according to how the vast majority of good Muslims behave today?"

The vast majority of Muslims today don't live in Shariah states. But that doesn't change the nature of Shariah, or what it would be like if implemented again.

Bukhari concludes: "The Muslim community also needs to be educated about Shariah, and we will be having these programs also for Muslims."

Yeah, sure you will.

America, apologizing to brutal murderers for disposing of terrorist messages in a quran, is Shariah law in America.

America, Judge Martin dismissing the charges against a Muslim who attacked a Halloween parade goer because his costume was an insult to Muhammad, is the Shariah.

The Washington Post on March 2 ran a piece written by Omar Sacirbey for the Religion News Service. Muslims launch campaign to 'understand' Shariah. It began: "Against a backdrop of heartland fears that U.S. Muslims seek to impose Islamic law on American courts, a leading Muslim group will launch a campaign on Monday (March 5) to dispel what it called misconceptions about Shariah."

"Heartland fears" are actually heartland realities: a new study has found that Shariah has already been used as a determining factor in court cases in 23 states.

"Many Americans associate Shariah," says the Post, "with the harsh punishments carried out in a few Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, even as U.S. Muslim groups insist they have no desire to introduce Islamic law on themselves or others." It quotes Zahid Bukhari, president of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Circle of North America, complaining: "There were all these wrong notions about Shariah."

Here's the thing: "U.S. Muslim groups insist they have no desire to introduce Islamic law on themselves or others," so why should they be blocking efforts to outlaw it? It doesn't make sense. And it's not that "Americans associate Shariah with the harsh punishments carried out in a few Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia" -- it's that those things are part of every form of Shariah ever known since the beginning of Islam. So are Americans right to associate Shariah with stonings, amputations, clitorectomies, honor killings, death for apostates, the denial of free speech, and the treatment of women like slaves? When has there ever been a Shariah state that didn't feature those things?

Bukhari goes on, as quoted in the Post: "The most worrisome thing, he said, was that the level of hatred toward Shariah had spread from the margins of society to the mainstream. The ICNA campaign has already drawn fire from 'anti-Shariah' groups in the United States."

"The level of hatred toward Shariah." It's "hatred" now to know what Shariah is and has always been in every place it has ever been implemented.

The article says that ICNA is sponsoring the "roughly $3 million dollar campaign" that "will feature billboards in at least 15 U.S. cities, 'Shariah seminars' on 20 college campuses, and town hall-style forums and interfaith events in 25 cities."

This sinister, deceptive taqiyya campaign has 3 million dollars, and we're having trouble scraping together two nickels for our campaign countering it with the truth. If we had 3 million dollars, everyone in America would know the truth about Shariah.

One of the billboards that ICNA has set up above the Holland Tunnel in New York City says, "Shariah is not scary." Shariah is not scary, unless you're an apostate from Islam, or a girl who doesn't want to wear hijab, or a wife who angers her husband, or a Christian who says he doesn't think Muhammad is a prophet, or a Jew who is breathing...

Then the WaPo mentions the resistance: "Even before the campaign was launched, there was already pushback from two groups, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of Nations, both categorized as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center."

Note how the WaPo mentions the SPLC's politicized and manipulative designation, while never mentioning that SPLC characterizes essentially any and every effective group that is not far-Left or Islamic supremacist as a "hate group." Nor does it mention that ICNA is a Muslim Brotherhood group, so designated in a captured internal MB document that says that the Brotherhood in the US is dedicated to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house."

The article does have the decency to quote me calling the ICNA campaign "a complete whitewash." Er yup. Then it says: "The two groups have designed a billboard parodying ICNA's Kansas City billboard. 'Shariah: Got Fatwa? Get help!' it says, along with a toll-free number and website, neither of which worked."

The WaPo is lying. They both work.

The deceptions start coming thick and fast in the WaPo article after that: "Geller wrote on her blog that the Quran endorses wife beating and mandates that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's. Shariah, she said, mandates the death penalty for apostasy and the subjugation of non-Muslims."

Wife-beating: "Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them" (Quran 4:34). Testimony: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (Qur'an 2:282). Death penalty for apostasy: Muhammad said: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari 9.84.57). Subjugation of non-Muslims: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." (Quran 9:29)

But the WaPo tells us not to believe the Quran's plain words: "Muslim scholars counter that Geller and like-minded critics cherry-pick from Islamic scripture or quote it out of context to paint a false picture of Shariah."

Does anyone still fall for this "out of context" line? Can anyone explain a context in which it is OK to say that a man can beat a woman? What context justifies saying apostates from Islam should be killed? What context makes it just fine that non-Muslims should be warred against and subjugated? They don't address any of that, only the question of a woman's testimony. They quote "Sheikh Abdool Rahman Khan, an ICNA Shariah expert and resident scholar at the Islamic Learning Foundation outside Chicago," acknowledging that "early Islamic law said a woman's testimony was worth half a man's, but only in some areas, such as finance and medicine, where there were few women bankers or doctors. 'It wasn't about equality, it was about participation of women in certain professions,' Rahman said."

And yet Shariah states like Saudi Arabia and Iran still devalue a woman's testimony. But they don't mention that. Instead, they haul out the familiar claim that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures contain "problematic texts" also, as if the world were plagued with Scripture-quoting Jewish and Christian terrorists. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im of the Emory University School of Law in Atlanta says: "But Christians aren't judged based on what the Bible said 2,000 years ago, but on how they behave today. Why are Muslims judged according to these literalist interpretations, and not according to how the vast majority of good Muslims behave today?"

The vast majority of Muslims today don't live in Shariah states. But that doesn't change the nature of Shariah, or what it would be like if implemented again.

Bukhari concludes: "The Muslim community also needs to be educated about Shariah, and we will be having these programs also for Muslims."